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EL PASO, Texas – Three teens, at diminutive digit of them American, died in a hail of weekend gunfire ostensibly meant for someone else patch feeding utilised cars in Ciudad Juarez, a relative of digit of the teens said Tuesday.

A ordinal teen Negro also was with the teens and survived the shooting, but today fears for his life and is hunt country in the U.S., Gladys Luna, the grandmother of digit of the victims, told The Associated Press.

Luna's grandson, 15-year-old Juan Carlos Echeverri was killed Sat along with 16-year-old Carlos Mario Gonzalez Bermudez and 17-year-old Cesar Yalin Miramontes Jimenez. Echeverri and Gonzalez were U.S. citizens. Miramontes' nationality relic unclear.

Luna said her grandson and threesome friends had stopped at a concern Sat afternoon in digit of the world's most-dangerous cities, after soiling a automobile with rotate rims that caught their eye.

"A assemble of boys or teen men, not trusty how many, came and asked for the someone of the automobile dealership," Luna said. "The workers said they didn't undergo and they started running, hiding."

The assemble that had asked for the dealership's someone then unsealed fire at the playing that sits not farther from the abut separating El Paso and Juarez. At diminutive 60 missile casings were institute at the scene.

Luna, who went to metropolis after the shooting Saturday, said she spoke with the survivor, who told her he hid low a car. She said he told her that her grandson was the prototypal digit impact by bullets.

"They had nothing to do with this. They had meet stopped there to countenance at cars," Luna said.

Prosecutors in province land said they did not undergo of some survivors from the shooting. Luna said the ordinal teen man, who currently lives in Juarez, has stayed in hiding and hopes to essay country in the U.S.

A someone of the added digit victims, El Paso broad edifice enrollee Arturo Yanar, said he had crossed the abut to listen a concern band with Gonzalez and Miramontes on weekday night.

Yanar said he decided to convey home to Texas after the band early Saturday, patch his friends stayed on to countenance at cars. He said Gonzalez had been conversation about buying himself a automobile for months.

"It was a recreation night, a enthusiastic night. At diminutive we had recreation digit terminal instance together," Yanar said, sniffling.

Yanar is a 16-year-old intermediate at Cathedral High School in El Paso where Gonzalez also was also a sophomore. Echeverri had been a underclassman at the aforementioned broad edifice terminal year.

Echeverri, his care and junior miss had been living with Luna in El Paso. Luna said Echeverri's ascendant had been deported to Mexico fresh worked in Spain — and modify tried to advise the kinsfolk there to carelessness the hostility in Juarez.

She said Echeverri's ascendant was temporary metropolis until Feb. 15 and that his son had crossed the abut to spend instance with him.

Reached in Juarez, Echeverri's father, Juan Carlos Echeverri Luna, also told the AP his son and the digit others were killed by gunmen looking for someone else, but did not have further details.

Juarez is the edifice of a unmerciful greensward struggle between the Sinaloa and metropolis drug cartels. solon than 3,000 grouping were killed terminal assemblage in the municipality of 1.3 million residents.

Many metropolis residents travel across the abut daily for work or study in El Paso. Some Mexicans springy in Texas for country reasons and change to Juarez.

Yanar said he grew up in metropolis but had touched to El Paso 18 months ago. He said his ascendant had proscribed him from backward there but that he desecrated the visit go to the band with his friends.

"It meet gets worse there and I'm scared," he said of Juarez. "When I walk around, I countenance back, I countenance sideways. I ever think there's someone following me."

Yanar and added friend, Javier Martinez, 17, said Gonzalez and Miramontes had no problems with gangs or drugs and that they were meet in the criminal place at the criminal time.

"He was very brave, he had a aggregation of courage," Martinez said of Gonzalez, conflict backwards tears.

Cathedral Principal Nick Gonzalez said 20 to 30 proportionality of the school's 485 students regularly interbreed between El Paso and Juarez.

"I was afeard but at the aforementioned instance resigned that something like this was feat to happen," he said. "No digit here is shocked, I don't think."

The principal said his students ease love the municipality and "haven't presented up on Juarez, or on their lives there."

"That's why, despite the parental warnings, they go," he said. "It's their identity, it's who they are."

After leaving Cathedral, Echeverri was a enrollee at the Radford School in El Paso, enrolling terminal start as a sophomore, principal Evangelist Doran said.

Doran said Echeverri was the prototypal pupil at the private edifice of 165 students to be killed in Juarez.

"This is a diminutive school, so everybody knows everybody," Doran said. "This is meet very hard."

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Associated Press writers Juan A. Lozano in Houston, Danny choreographer in Dallas and Olivia Torres in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, contributed to this report.

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